Cousins, Norman

1915 - Norman Cousins, born on the 24th of June in Union City, New Jersey. He was a prominent political journalist, author, professor, and world peace advocate.

1926 - At age 11, he was misdiagnosed with tuberculosis and placed in a sanatorium.

1934 - He joined the staff of the New York Evening Post (Now the New York Post).

1935 - He was hired by Current History as a book critic. He would later ascend to the position of managing editor.

1940 - He also befriend the staff of the Saturday Review of Literature (later renamed Saturday Review), which had its offices in the same building. He later join the staff of that publication.

1942 - He was named editor-in-chief of the Saturday Review of Literature.

1953 - Wrote a collection of non-fiction books on the same subjects, such as Who Speaks for Man? , which advocated a World Federation and nuclear disarmament.

1963 - Awarded an Eleanor Roosevelt Peace Award.

1968 - Given the Family Man of the Year Award.

1971 - Received the United Nations Peace Medal.

1980 - He wrote a collection of best-selling non-fiction books on illness and healing, as well as the autobiographical memoir, Human Options: An Autobiographical Notebook.

1984 - In a forum at the University of California, Berkeley entitled “Quest for Peace”, he recalled the long editorial he wrote on the 6th of August 1945, the day the United States dropped the bomb in Hiroshima. Titled “The Modern Man is Obsolete,”.

1990 - Received the Albert Schweitzer Prize.

- He died of heart failure on the 30th of November in Los Angeles, California, having survived years longer than his doctors predicted: 10 years after his first heart attack, 16 years after his collagen illness, and 26 years after his doctors first diagnosed his heart disease.

Page last updated: 1:26am, 04th Jun '07

"Respect for the fragility and importance of an individual life is still the mark of an educated man."

"Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live."

"The capacity for hope is the most significant fact of life. It provides human beings with a sense of destination and the energy to get started."

"The main failure of education is that it has not prepared people to comprehend matters concerning human destiny."

"A library, to modify the famous metaphor of Socrates, should be the delivery room for the birth of ideas-a place where history comes to life."